


Memory Lane

by trustingHim17



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:14:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27157139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trustingHim17/pseuds/trustingHim17
Summary: Over ten years after Harry’s death, Watson finally learns why his brother started drinking
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

_I killed our parents._

The words circled my mind, forcing everything else to the background for the moment, and I stared at the journal in my hand.

_I knew Father had been having chest pains, yet I said nothing when he took the reins._

_And now they’re dead._

I wanted to kick myself. I had known that Harry had taken our parents’ deaths hard, but I had never understood why. Less than a week before I was scheduled to ship out to India with the Army, our parents had been on the way to town when a heart attack killed our father, and our mother had died when the horses had panicked and overturned the cart. I had tried to stay home to help Harry take care of the estate, but he had refused. He had insisted that I need not cancel my plans, that I was needed by my unit, that he would be fine. He had assured me that he would have everything taken care of and my room ready for when I returned, and I had believed him.

I had left him when he had been blaming himself for our parents’ deaths.

I wished he were here for many reasons, but in that moment, the chief one was to call him an idiot. Father would not have listened that day even if Harry _had_ spoken up, and my brother should have known that. Stubborn to the point of disregarding logic, our Father would never have let Mother drive because of a chance. There was nothing Harry could have done that day to prevent what had happened.

Tearing my thoughts away from an internal, one-sided argument, I leaned back on the bed and forced myself to continue reading, wanting to finish the journal—the last thing I had of my brother’s, with the watch lying broken in my desk—before Holmes returned in a few hours. The executor had sent it to me, apologizing that it had been misplaced for so many years, and I had thoroughly enjoyed watching the brother I remembered come alive around me. I still welcomed it, though my enjoyment was now tempered by grief. Harry had not been at fault for the loss of our parents, and I grieved that I had not stayed home, not stayed with him, long enough to tell him that. I had fallen for the front he had shown me, believing him when he said he would be fine.

The journal touched on my leaving, then delved into the managing of our parents’ estate, and time slipped away as I traveled through years and miles, walking next to my brother in a way I could not at the time. From reassuring the few servants we had left to jokes about how caring for the horses reminded him of me, he had handled the estate admirably, doing his duty here while I did mine on the other side of the world. I kept reading, grinning at the memories his descriptions evoked even as I tensely waited for it all to fall apart. I had never learned how my brother had gone from his laughing, confidant self to a shell of a man too drunk to recognize me, and I dreaded finding out.

Months passed through the written word, and I kept a careful track of dates to match to my memories of my time in India and Afghanistan, noting what I was doing compared to what he was doing on any given day. June came and went, then July, and the entry on my brother’s birthday held more references to me than it did to him. I lightly traced the words, regretting that I had not been there for what had turned out to be his last birthday as the person I trusted above all others.

I kept reading, following as he worked to keep our parents’ estate going long enough to sell parts of it, reliving years of childhood memories when he mentioned various things around the grounds. I laughed at his account of a stray cat having a litter of kittens in the cellar, shook my head when the housekeeper’s young son sent the house into an uproar by disappearing only to be found on the roof, and grinned when only the promise of a kitten got him down. I had missed my brother dearly—especially in recent weeks—and reading his journal was like having him sitting on the bed next to me.

_Johnny. Oh, Johnny._

My name on the next page caught my eye, and I tore my attention from an account of a colt he was training, skipping to the beginning of August to read the entry.

_They just announced the numbers from the Battle of Maiwand, and your unit was listed as one that had lost so many._

_Little brother, how can you be gone? I should never have let you go. Your unit would have gone without you. Losing our parents was one of the few things we could have used without censure to keep you from leaving, so why didn’t I take it? I told you to leave, that all would be just fine while you served our country, never dreaming that you would never return. Instead of trying to trick me with a birthday prank, you died in a war halfway around the world._

_How could I have sent my little brother to die in a horrible battle? You were a doctor. You were supposed to be safe!_

_But nowhere in battle is safe. I should have remembered that._

_Was it fast? Did you suffer? Were you alone?_

_I am alone now, Johnny. There’s no one left. I didn’t speak up in time to save our parents, and I didn’t speak to save you, little brother. What use am I? I killed my entire family…_

The writing continued illegibly, blurred by moisture wrinkling the page and smearing the ink, and I stared.

_How could I have sent my little brother to die?_

Harry had thought I was _dead_? What he had said that day so many years ago finally made sense.

Months had passed between that horrible battle and my returning home as I struggled to recover from the dual blow of my injuries and contracting enteric fever. When I finally returned from the front, I had shown up at our childhood home to find another family living there, and it had taken nearly a day of asking around town for someone to point me to the local tavern. I had found a shell of my brother in that decrepit building, cradling his cup in both hands.

“Harry?” I had asked, limping slowly toward the table, my injuries complaining at all the walking I had done that day. “Harry, what happened?”

Hollow eyes had barely glanced at me before returning to staring through his cup, and I sank into the seat across from him.

“Harry? Talk to me, Harry. Why are strangers living in our home? Why do I find you in a tavern instead of meeting me at the dock?”

“Gone. They’re all gone,” he had moaned after a too-long silence. “They left, and it’s my fault. Oh, Johnny. Little brother, I wish you would come home!”

“I am home, Harry. Do you not recognize me?”

“But you won’t,” he had continued, speaking over me. “You won’t come to me. My fault. Maybe I’ll go to you, instead. There’s nothing left for me here.” He took a drink from his cup, and I had easily recognized the smell of the tavern’s potent brew.

I had tried for nearly an hour to get him to look at me, to respond to me, to _recognize_ me, with no success. He had been too drunk to recognize me and too deep in his thoughts of whatever had happened to respond to my questions, and I had left quickly after he finally snapped something about leaving him be and threw the empty cup at me. I had left the tavern that day grieving the loss of my brother as I had grieved my parents so many months before, trying to find some way of reaching him as I limped slowly through town.

“It cannae be! John Watson?”

The heavily accented voice had interrupted my musings, and I had glanced up, leaning heavily on my cane to see an older lady hurrying across the street towards me.

“Martha,” I had greeted with a tired smile, and my old housekeeper’s face lit with delight.

“It is ye!” She had wrapped me in a hug as she had so many times when I was a boy, and I had smothered a gasp as she nearly knocked me off balance.

“Sorry, laddie.” She quickly steadied me, noting everything about me with the eyes of a mother. “Ah’m jist sae glad tae see ye!”

I had quickly asked what had happened, putting off any questions about my current state to focus on something much more important, but she had had no answer for me. She knew only that Harry had started drinking sometime in August. He had sold the house later that month, and Martha had left when the new family brought their own housekeeper.

She had insisted I stay with them for as long as I needed, but I did not stay long. I could not stay where I knew my brother sat alone and drunk in the local tavern, and after several more attempts to reach him garnered less notice each time, I had gone to London, gone to a large city with no memories so I could start over. I could not help him if he did not let me. My health was ruined; I would not survive without a place to heal, and I could hardly bring him with me if he refused to let me near him. I had mulled it over each night after Martha and her family had gone to bed, trying to find some way of reaching him, of caring for him, of bringing him with me wherever I ended up, but there was nothing. Until he came to himself long enough to find the letter I had left in his coat and contact me, I had to live as if my brother was gone. I could only hope Harry would soon come to his senses.

He never had.

“Doctor?” A knock sounded on my bedroom door. “Message for you.”

I pulled myself to my feet, refusing to put the journal down for even a moment as I shuffled across the room. Thanking her when she handed me an envelope, I barely noted the sender’s name before tossing it on my desk. My thoughts were still more focused on memories of my brother and my childhood home, and her footsteps faded from hearing as I resettled myself on my bed.

There were only a couple more entries before he had stopped journaling, and I flipped back to the beginning, enjoying my brother’s presence too much to stop now. I would keep reading until I could picture it all. Harry had detailed many things in his journal that I had nearly forgotten, and I eventually dug out my own journal from that time to compare notes.

A familiar drawing fell from the pages, and I smiled sadly, recalling one of many days spent outside playing my viola while Harry drew. One memory brought another, and I kept reading, skipping through time to say hello to my brother once again. How I missed him!

* * *

The door nearly slammed shut behind him, and he tossed his hat towards the stand and bounded up the stairs. Watson was going to regret not coming today, he knew. The case had contained an interesting twist at the end that his friend would have loved weaving into one of those ridiculous stories, and he looked forward to explaining it, looked forward to Watson’s expression when he explained how the pieces had finally come together in the end. His friend had always loved the more intricate cases.

“Watson?” he called as he reached the landing. Silence answered him, and he opened the door to an empty room. He frowned, crossing the room as he wondered where Watson had gone. He had expected his friend to be in the sitting room when he returned, curious as to how the case had concluded.

Movement sounded from the room above, and he checked the clock. That explained it; he was home early. Watson had probably opened the package that had arrived the night before, he decided, and the book had undoubtedly stolen so much of his attention that he had not heard the door. He would come down when he finished, and until then, Holmes could update his commonplace books with the information from this case. It was always better to do that when the case was fresh, anyway.

Updating the various entries did not take long, but another page caught his attention, and he began reading, refreshing his memory on some of the more common names in his list. It had been several months since he last read through his indices, and it was always better to remember than to have to look it up. There was Baker, Banker, Bennet, Boston Major and Minor…

Footsteps on the landing broke into his concentration, and he looked up as Mrs. Hudson walked into the room, glancing at Watson’s empty chair with a frown.

“Did the doctor tell you what was going on?”

He raised an eyebrow. “I have not spoken with him since this morning. Did something happen?”

Worry flashed across her gaze. “I don’t know. He spent all day in his room. I thought he might have told you.”

He relaxed, flicking a hand and turning back to the index in his lap. “He is probably just reading. A package arrived yesterday, and you know how those ridiculous stories catch his attention.”

She shook her head, burying her clenched fingers in her skirt. “He dropped my title earlier,” she replied. “Something is wrong. I tried to ask, but he ignored me. Did something happen yesterday?”

Mrs. Hudson had been trying to get them to drop her title for years, and, while she had given up with Holmes long ago, it had turned into a running joke with Watson. Why she would not be glad that he had finally dropped the title was beyond him, but he doubted it was anything to warrant her concern.

“Nothing happened, Mrs. Hudson. I am sure he just is just caught in the novel, but if you are that concerned, go ask him.”

He turned a page, dismissing her presence as he skimmed the next entry.

“As I _just_ told you,” she frowned at him, “he refused to answer me. You know how stubborn he can be about some things. He needs someone just as stubborn to get through to him.”

He scowled at the mild insult but did not look up, wondering why she had decided to fret about something so mundane. Watson got pulled into a novel frequently, and only a handful of things would pull him out of a captivating one. The book he had received was probably the new release he had mentioned the other day.

A familiar name caught his eye, and he started reading in earnest.

“Mr. Holmes, listen to me!” She stepped closer, as if physical proximity would catch his attention where words had not. “Something is _wrong._ The last and only time he has _ever_ called me Martha was a few weeks before you returned!”

He froze in the middle of turning another page, understanding washing over him as that time pushed itself to the front of his mind. In a recent late-night conversation, Watson had finally put into words some of what he had been thinking before and when Holmes had so foolishly appeared in the doctor’s consulting room. Holmes had no illusions that Watson had voiced _all_ of it, but what he _had_ voiced was plenty to understand Mrs. Hudson’s worry. If something had sent him back to that mindset…

She stared after him worriedly as he set the index aside and hurried upstairs.


	2. Chapter 2

_“What do you want to be, Johnny?”_

_I looked up from my book at where my brother sat on his bed across the room. “What was that?”_

_“What do you want to be? When you grow up?”_

_There was no need to think about that. “A doctor, of course. With how often you drag us into trouble, I will need the skills to patch you up.”_

_He laughed at my imitation of Martha’s pet phrase when we came to her with injuries—a frequent occurrence with Mother so busy helping Father. “No, really.”_

_“Really,” I replied, setting my book aside with a grin. “I want to be a doctor. I’ll be able to help people that way. People always need a doctor. What do you want to be?”_

_He shook his head, grinning ruefully. “It’s good that I’m the older and you’re the younger,” he replied. “I like the idea of taking the estate eventually, though I will downsize it quite a bit. We have entirely too much land.”_

_I smirked, knowing that the complaint was likely born more of irritation at Father’s recent lessons than a true wish to sell anything. “What will you do with it?”_

_“Train horses,” he answered decisively. “Father has already started raising and training a few to sell, and I like it.”_

_I tried to refrain from making a face. I liked the animals well enough and knew how to ride them, but I hated caring for the horses. Messy, nasty work, and I had gotten kicked more than once. I had been grateful when Father assigned that chore to someone else._

“Watson?”

A knock sounded on my door, but I barely heard it, too focused on the journal and the memories coming to life around me to fully realize that someone was at my door and I should probably answer. My attention had narrowed too far for me to wonder why Holmes was back early—or even really notice that he was. I flipped several pages as I adjusted against the headboard, and another scene unfolded in my mind’s eye.

_“Johnny, come on!”_

_Harry closed my textbook with a thump and pulled me to my feet, leaving the book on the grass._

_“You’ve been staring at that book long enough,” he informed me, grinning. “You’re on vacation! Act like it!”_

_Dragging me away from my textbooks despite my protests, he led me to where he had spotted some deer, and we slowly tracked them through the woods. When I lost interest in that and tried to go back to my texts, he tossed me a stick and started a game we had invented years before, one which invariably ended with the both of us winded, bruised, laughing, and occasionally drenched from an unexpected bath in the creek. Nearly an hour passed before I pulled myself up off the grass, still laughing._

_“Thank you, Harry,” I finally voiced, slowly gathering my books to go back to the house. “I needed that.”_

_“Anytime, little brother.” He tried to ruffle my hair, and I ducked, swatting at him._

_“That’s_ Doctor _little brother to you!”_

_He smirked. “Not for another five months, it’s not. And it never will be if you melt your brain by studying too much.”_

_I rolled my eyes at him, swinging my smallest textbook at his shoulder. “Studying will not melt your brain, and you know it. I need to keep my skills fresh. I can’t go two months doing nothing and expect to remember everything I learned last term.”_

_He dodged the book, a grin splitting his face. “You don’t see me studying those lessons Father makes me learn, do you?”_

_He opened the door, and I followed him through with a huff of feigned irritation. “Father is not teaching you a dead language while making you memorize the scientific name of every part of the body along with all their known ailments and the possible treatments for those ailments. Of course you don’t need to read his books every day. You use it enough while helping him to never forget what you learned.”_

_“That’s beside the point.”_

“Alright, Watson?”

Holmes’ voice startled me, snapping me painfully out of the memory, and I smothered a flinch.

“Of course,” I told him, flicking a hand in acknowledgement but not bothering to look up from the journal I read. “I’ll be down later.”

I readjusted again, turning my back to the door as it clicked shut, and a new memory bubbled up.

_“Why do you read that stuff, anyway?”_

_I glanced up at where he stood near the doorway, then marked my place and set the novel aside as I shrugged. “It’s interesting.”_

_“Rubbish, more like,” he answered, rolling his eyes._

_I laughed. Harry had never enjoyed any of the more romantic novels, preferring the more adventurous ones when he picked up a novel at all. He usually drew when he wanted a break, but on the few occasions he decided to read, he was more likely to open a research text on whatever topic currently held his interest._

_“They make a good diversion,” I answered with another shrug. “You’re the one who decided to go into town today. Catch yourself a girlfriend?”_

_He swatted at me, trying to smother his smirk at the overused joke that had started when a fishing trip ended with the daughter of a neighboring family following him around. I dodged with a grin but made no verbal response, and he grabbed his drawing supplies. The book disappeared into a pocket as I followed him out the door, viola in hand._

Something jolted me out of the memory, and I turned the page, but I had reached the end of the journal again. I found myself reading the entry from the day he heard about Maiwand, and I frowned. I turned to another entry, looking for one before everything fell apart, but the words blurred on the page. I gave up trying to read as the fond nostalgia drowned under a wave of grief.

“Blooming idiot,” I muttered, reaching to stare at the drawing that had fallen from my journal. He had meant it as a simple doodle to kill time, but the straightforward sketch portrayed both of us with a flourish that was all my brother. “If you hadn’t fallen so quickly into drink, you would have received my message announcing my travel plans, and we could have avoided the whole mess. What would you think of me now?”

“The same thing he thought of you then.”

Holmes’ voice came from near the door, and I started violently, nearly knocking Harry’s journal off the bed.

“Holmes!” I kept my back to him, trying to cover the foolish sentimentality in which I had been indulging. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

“I announced my entrance,” he replied, coming to stand a few feet behind me. “It is not my fault you thought I left when I closed the door.”

I huffed at him but said nothing, staring at the drawing for a moment longer before slipping it back into my journal.

“What happened with your case?” I asked, seeing no reason to voice what I had been doing when the evidence was scattered over my bed.

Silence answered me, and I finally turned to see him frowning at me, looking between me and the tangible memories I had spread out on top of the covers.

“Holmes? Is something wrong?”

“I could ask you the same question.”

I shook my head. “I was just caught up in what I was reading,” I said quietly, organizing some of the papers covering my bed. “Don’t worry about it.”

He hesitated, trying to decide if I was telling the truth, and I rolled my eyes. “Why did you come up? Supper is not for another two hours.”

He stared at me for a moment longer before dragging my desk chair over. “Tell me about him,” he offered instead of answering, nodding at the journal sitting next to me on the bed.

Confusion washed over me, and I made no immediate answer, studying him as I tried to decide what was wrong. “You have never been interested in hearing about my brother before.”

“You have never spent an entire day reading his journal and ignoring Mrs. Hudson,” he replied quickly. “Did something happen?”

He had been on my mind since before the watch had broken, but I saw no reason to mention that, and I shook my head. “My package yesterday contained his journal. The executor sent it with apologies for it being misplaced for so many years, and I decided to read it, to find out what had happened.”

He frowned again. “You knew what happened.”

“But not _why_ ,” I answered. “Not even our housekeeper, a second mother to us both, knew what had changed him to a drunken shell of the brother I knew.” I gestured at the journal. “The idiot saw the Battle of Maiwand numbers and assumed I was dead.”

His frown deepened, reading more into my words than even I knew, and he glanced around the room. “How did the watch break?” he asked a moment later.

I stared at him. “How—” I broke off, covering my surprise with a smirk as I leaned back against the headboard and crossed my arms. “I should know better by now, but how did you know the watch had broken?”

He quirked a quick grin, pleased to have surprised me even as he continued studying me. “You always carry it on you, yet it is not in your pocket, and your desk drawer is open enough to glimpse it in the back. Why else would you have left it in the back of the drawer but that it had broken? What I cannot deduce without looking at it is how.”

I huffed, feigning more irritation than I felt, but answered his original question. “I slipped and dropped it. I was fortunate to get it back in the crowd, but the impact broke something internally. Why did you come up here, Holmes? I know it wasn’t to play twenty questions.”

He made no answer, still studying me, and I rolled my eyes and turned back to the journal, flipping back to the beginning to start over. If he wanted to stare at me while I read, I saw no reason to try to stop him. I had ignored more annoying things over the years.

“What was your housekeeper’s name?”

I looked back up at him, raising an eyebrow. “You were serious about wanting to hear about him?”

“Of course,” he nodded, still watching me. “I would not have said it otherwise.”

I hesitated, wondering if voicing the memories would somehow diminish them, and Holmes studied me. He waited patiently enough for me to decide, but something in his gaze said this was more than curiosity. He was worried about something. I doubted he would tell me what, but if listening to my memories with Harry would help, I could hardly say no.

“You remind me of him, actually, in many ways.” A strange relief appeared in his gaze as I spoke, and I readjusted on the bed, turning to where I could look at him without craning my neck. “He used to get us into the craziest situations…”

I dove into a story detailing the first of Harry’s regular kitchen raids. He had started them one day as a protest that Martha, our housekeeper, had decided that the key to liking any particular food—asparagus, in this case—was simply by eating it multiple times until the taste was acquired. Both of us despised asparagus, and I had willingly helped him “redistribute” that horrid vegetable to various corners around the kitchen as well as “redistribute” some of the sweets she had recently made to our bedroom. She had been finding asparagus for _days_ , and we had both eaten so much sugar that Father had banished us from the house until our words came slow enough for him to understand. We had somehow escaped punishment, and we had pulled it again a few months later—when the squash ripened.

Our parents found the raids too amusing to have any hope of punishing us for them as long as we stayed within certain limits, and they quickly became routine. He would execute one such “raid” whenever he decided the pantry had gotten too full and some of it needed to reach the table—usually after Martha cooked too many vegetables for too many nights in a row—and I frequently helped, enjoying the covert nature as well as the inevitable reward. That memory led to another, and I told story after story, recalling days spent side by side, whether studying or exploring the area around our home.

Holmes asked a question occasionally, but mostly he let me talk, listening to me bounce from one memory to the next, from wandering the fields to searching the large house for hidden rooms. Entire days could disappear with my brother in the lead, and we had roamed the countryside together when we could get free of our lessons, going further with our explorations each year. I with my viola and Harry with his drawing set, we had spent more time in the fields than we did at home some weeks, and I had many fond memories of conversations about anything and everything. Harry had been my closest friend growing up, and though we had made a few friends in town, I never wanted anything more than to spend time with my brother. Where he went, I usually did too, and vice versa.

Holmes finally relaxed sometime during my account of when Mother put Martha in charge of Harry’s punishment after he accidently let the horses escape, but he still appeared interested, so I kept talking. Hours slipped away as I voiced so many memories over so many years.

He never would tell me why he had originally come to my room, but I was glad he had. It had been much too long since I had been able to share memories of my brother. He and Holmes were alike in so many ways that describing one was at times the same as describing the other.

Looking at it like that, it was no wonder I considered Holmes just as much my brother as I did Harry.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is always greatly appreciated :)


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